In Memoriam. A Bibliography by Tom Donovan

[Dust Jacket Collector]

In Memoriam : A Bibliography of Personal Memorial Volumes of the Great War 1914 1918 by Tom Donovan. Published by Tom Donovan Editions 2015. 390pp. £75 in a small limited edition.

Available from www.tomdonovaneditions.com

Almost as soon as the War began a series of books began to be published for the purpose of commemorating the lives of soldiers killed in the War. Nearly exclusively produced by the families of fallen officers, these often slim volumes generally follow the same format school life with inevitable juvenile poems, enlistment & training, War service with letters & diaries & Letters of Condolence from fellow soldiers. As most were meant for family & friends they were generally produced in fairly small quantities maybe 50 100 copies - & usually privately printed. These elusive items often give a unique & moving description of life at the front in all its immediacy without the leavening effect of post-war rewriting.

As a collector of such volumes over many years the overriding difficulty has always been in knowing what has been published. They are never catalogued as memorial volumes by libraries & buying likely sounding works online is as likely to turn up a volume of sermons as a front line diary.

So Im extremely pleased to welcome this volume from Tom Donovan. The result of over five years work, the author has managed to identify 365 such books, the vast majority completely unknown to me. Each book is given a separate page with full publishing details, the soldiers school, university & service record and a complete detailing of the books contents. There are also 16 pages of illustrations of the original volumes. The comprehensive index lists Regiments, Schools & Universities, Cemeteries, Battles etc. which should prove of immense value to those who wish to track down previously unrecorded battlefield accounts for specific units.

Its impossible to overstate the importance of this bibliography. No such thing has been attempted before & without it these unique documents of War would have been in danger of passing out of sight unrecorded. I need hardly say, as with all books from this publisher, it is most beautifully produced. It bodes well for the promised future volumes in the series dealing with the many published volumes of Personal Memoirs of the War.

[rflory]

I have ordered a copy and eagerly await its publication.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

I have ordered a copy and eagerly await its publication.

You won't regret it.